NEXTY Electronics Corporation (head office: Tokyo; President: Yasuhiro Kakihara; hereinafter “NEXTY Electronics”), the electronics trading subsidiary of Toyota Tsusho Group, has joined the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) Digital Infrastructure Development Project for Digital Transformation of Industries in an open recruitment drive. The research and development project’s purpose is to build a next-generation transaction platform enabling linked information between ordering, invoicing, and settlement systems. The theme of NEXTY’s work will involve development and efficacy tests for integrated systems in a virtual next-generation transaction platform.

The next-generation transaction platform will enable Society 5.0 by digitally completing chains of transactions between companies relating to orders, invoicing, and settlements. The platform will leverage the accumulated data to offer new services such as traceability*1 management. The demonstration tests are meant to firmly implement the platforms in society.

1.  Background

To boost industrial competitiveness ahead of Society 5.0, Japan is pushing for digital transformation to establish free, open, safe, and secure data flows. In the automotive industry, each OEM and supplier uses different business practices and systems. Data on transactions does not have a consistent format. This makes feeding data into the company‘s own system challenging. With the increase in the number of transactions, many screens and systems have come into use, making processing complex.

2. Theme overview

The theme of NEXTY’s work will involve making rule for data used in transactions and clarifying methods for identifying companies and more. This will help digitally complete chains of transactions relating to orders, invoicing, and settlements with automotive industry software. This platform to create Society 5.0 will be based on DADC*2-designed architecture for next-generation transaction platforms.*3 The theme also involves prototyping and trialing a platform for digitally completing transactions. By collecting transaction data on software for R&D of usage systems, NEXTY will consider new services to enhance the added value of transaction data, such as traceability.

The theme’s aim is to utilize the moderix®*4 model exchanging platform NEXTY Electronics developed to rapidly implement applications for software transactions.

The data coordination platform will be developed with general use in mind and will be trialed in multiple industries and sectors.

Concept diagram: next-generation transaction platform using moderix®

*1. Traceability: Managing the flow of transacted software (origin and destination)

*2. DADC (Digital Architecture Design Center): Proponent of mechanisms and systems enabling the data coordination and sharing needed for Society 5.0 (the super smart society)

https://www.ipa.go.jp/en/about/org/dadc/index.html

*3. Architecture for next-generation transaction platforms: Based on functional requirements to build a virtual next-generation transactions platform, it regulates general functions required for transaction processes and coordinated flows to allocate roles and actors performing each function.

*4. moderix®: Cloud service used to exchanging among companies digital specifications developed to streamline automotive industry software design

https://moderix.com (Japanese only, English website under preparation)

■About NEXTY Electronics

NEXTY Electronics, an electronics trading company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan is one of the core members of the Toyota Tsusho Group’s electronics business and boasts top-of-class scale in the automotive electronics sector. With its core strengths of technology and products, NEXTY Electronics meets customer and global needs in a broad range of areas and provides solutions to the challenges faced by society. It achieves this by actively adapting the autonomous driving, connected and other leading-edge technologies it has cultivated in the automotive electronics sector for use in other industries. It offers optimum global solutions that transcend regions and business boundaries by leveraging the Toyota Tsusho Group’s global network and intensifying its  discovery of the cutting-edge proprietary technologies of startups from around the world. Visit the links below for more information.

NEXTY Electronics website: https://www.nexty-ele.com/en/